Jay Postones of TesseracT

Well, this is an absolute honor. This will be my first attempt at writing a blog, so please poke, tweet, dislike, or otherwise sabotage my online life should I waffle on about irrelevancies.

I’m Jay Postones, and I play drums for TesseracT. For those of you who are new to us, we’re a five-piece progressive band who’ve grown up on a varied musical diet of everything from Pink Floyd to Meshuggah (yeah…). On May 27 we’re releasing our second album, Altered State.

As this is my first blog, it kind of makes sense to go back to the very start: I was born a baby in April, 1984, and quickly took to keyboards at the age of three. At ten I heard “Aja” by Steely Dan, and Steve Gadd’s drumming was enough to convince me that drums were way cooler than keyboards. I played in various bands until, in 2005, my guitarist at the time, Mike, played me a TesseracT demo whilst posing the question, “Dude, what do you think of this drummer”? My response: “Ridiculous, who is he”? Mike: “It’s the guitarist—Acle Kahney.”

Hearing that first demo was enough for me to contact Acle and subsequently hassle him for eighteen months to audition me. We eventually got together for a jam, where my audition was a very early version of “Concealing Fate: Part 5.”

One album, two EPs, three U.S. tours, four singers, and seven years later, here we are, about to drop easily the most accomplished album I’ve ever worked on.

So, drums. I play a Crush Sublime Bubinga kit in a three-up, one-down configuration—10″, 12″, and 13″ toms, a 16″ floor tom, a 22″ kick, and a 5×14 snare. Sabian cymbals—LOTS of them! My go-to models are usually in the HH and AAX ranges. I’ve been using a Vault 19″ Holy China for the past eighteen months, and seriously, it’s the most insane cymbal I’ve ever heard. It sounds how a China should sound—cutting, trashy, loud-as-’80s-clothes, and it looks amazing too.

I play Regal Tip 5BX coated sticks. I find them to be the perfect weight for my style of drumming. The great thing about them being coated is that right from the very start of the show, you have that bit of extra grip. The best grip-tip I’ve been given: keep a piece of sandpaper handy by the kit to rough up the grip a little for when my hands decide they want to let go through sweat. It works!

So come and see me not drop my sticks in May, when TesseracT tour Europe with our U.S. buddies Periphery and then the U.K. on our headline tour.